Page 687 - Belgrave Diaries(N)_Neat

1932

Saturday 23rd Jan 1932

The Resident and his party left, my boy Hamood went with them as I had given him leave to go to Hassa to get married and
they were glad to take an extra servant, an Arab. Took some cases in the morning. Went out to see the Shaikh in the afternoon
and stayed there a long time, Sulman and Abdulla were there, he talked about Holmes' application for a further extension of the
oil concession and also about the royalty which he considers should be paid to his own packet not to the Treasury, then he
began a long wail about his finances and as usual said he had no money, I got very annoyed by it all and when he said he had
not enough to buy new clothes for the Eid I suggested that he might stop doing expensive and un needed building on his house.
It went on for two hours, the same old story. I get so tired of hearing about it all, he is quite hopeless about money and utterly
irresponsible. Some Air force men came in before dinner with a man called Galpin, from the Imperial Airways who has come
out from London to arrange about the alternative route in case they do not come to terms with Persia about the route down the
Persian coast. Went up to the Fort in the morning and called on the Kadis, finally, about the Proclamation.

Sunday [24 January]

Very busy morning, saw one of the Air Force men about some work they want to do, building a pier, then had a long interview
with Galpin about Imperial Airways, then Shaikh Abdulla came in and we talked about accounts and he said that the Shaikh
was absurd in going on as he had yesterday, and very unfair to me, then saw Steele about some business with Gallenders. In
the afternoon worked at history with the Nather, went for a drive and had Holmes and Galpin to dinner. They didnt hit it off
very well. Yusuf Kanoo went to Hassa. The town is full of the wildest rumours of what is going on in Hassa, some say that
Ibn Saoud has made a treaty with the Soviet Government and the Resident has gone to find out about it and try and stop it,
others say it is about the Kuwait boundary and some say it is about oil or the idea of an Arab federation, it may be all or none.

Monday Jan 25th 1932
Court. In the morning before breakfast I had Galpin to see me, he stayed and had breakfast with us and then I handed him over
to Mohamed Khalil with whom he had some work to do about getting out an estimate for a jetty. I hope the Imperial Airways
line does come through Bahrain but I fear it wont as it will cost them about seventy thousand pounds to change the route, but if
the Persians make themselves too objectionable they will have to shift to this side. Galpin is a very pleasant fellow, his father
is a parson in Essex and M knows him, they live near Heaven's mother. Took a lot of diving cases, it is the time for Tesquam,
advances, and many of the divers are not getting anything this year as so many boats wont go out diving as their owners cant
afford to finance them. Gardened after lunch, the garden is doing well now that it is warm and still weather again, I have I
think more variety of seeds coming up than I have ever had before and in a month it will be really very gay indeed. In the
evening we went out to a party at the oil camp, we went out at tea time and didnt get back till after midnight. First we had tea
with the Skinners at their house and then played Bridge there, then we went down to the mens room and drank cocktails, all the
drillers came in, all looking very neat in dark suits and then we went into dinner, there were twenty five people, quite a party.
The dinner was moderately good, though they have a Chinese cook who came all the way from San Francisco or somewhere
else, they got mildly lively at dinner and began throwing food about, de Grenier became very annoyed as everyone aimed at his
large bald head so he suddenly threw a plate of chocolates, hard ones, across the room; he always gets so rough. After dinner